The water on the bay still frozen looked like stacked layers of blues, purples and whites, shimmering and endless. The quiet was absolute, penetrating, deadly. The horizon blurred, the view swallowed us, the rocks that supported us suddenly became teeth. We retreated, snow in our shoes, urgency in our movement.
People tranformed into vessels, containing halos, glowing at different intensities; clouds of light diffusing into each other, new colours invented, new shapes emerged, I floated from cloud to cloud, feeling the vibrations and stirring the air.
On my bike, suffering and wanting to turn around, I realized something important: decisions mustn’t be made while riding uphill.
Snow fell softly tonight, coating everything in my neighborhood. It was beautiful. I watched the glowing snow falling in the light of streetlamps, and did laps in my driveway to hear the crunching underfoot.
Today snow covered fields glowed a faint blue, as though hiding electricity, or it had the name of something on the tip of its toungue. The shadows of tree branches snaked over the snow sheets like childrens fingers and a flashlight. Blue skies faced off against a setting sun in the football pitch sky, suspenseful silence reminding me how cold I was.
Coming home is difficult. I long for home when I’m uncomfortable in new places. I remember spots I look forward to revisiting. The days seem longer when away.
Coming home is like coming to a quick stop from running hard; coming home involves balancing on the tips of your toes while swinging your arms to keep from falling. It is too easy to fall.
Home again and my most familiar roads look different with perspective. Winter is at its end, but spring has not arrived. After death, before life, confused and without form, where the ground and sky are grey on grey. It’s quiet, like the end of a funeral when the guests have gone home. Like meeting eyes with the silence of death.
Tonight I recognized a perfect moment just as it happened, just as the event was echoing in my head.
Are words beautiful or just the images they inspire? Words map ideas, sounds, emotions. How can words be beautiful without coupling to imagination? Words are simply a representation of what they are describing, yet… their power makes them uniquely beautiful.
When the image blurs new meaning emerges. Colour and motion replace detail. All that was important has changed. Basic truths are revealed.
Pure white smoke, rolling and rising from below, had me wondering what was on fire. It was not smoke, but fog, coming in off the sound. How lovely it was to be above a cloud.
It was gray all day in Seattle. I was on the bus when the clouds cleared, exposing mountains like bared teeth.
Starting out on another trip it occurs to me that I have no home. Overhead the announcement has begun but I cannot understand the busdriver, and to my left the clouds are finally lifting from the mountains they’ve been hiding all day. Forever a guest, even in my hometown, changes are never subtle, since long periods between visits won’t allow it. Everything is always changing. I’m always moving despite my hatred of goodbyes and the anxiety of first nights in new places. I am always fighting the inertia to stay still and it never gets easier. The Vancouver skyline is behind us, I get stiff in the neck looking back at it; it’s beautiful dressed in clouds, daring you to call it gray.
